So, this is an unusual one. The word is spreading, seemingly as a result of Vitaliy Kiselev over at Personal View, that Canon is planning to kill off the entire EOS M product line. There’s been no statement from Canon, although Personal View doesn’t state their source for their belief, either.
Canon has been sending out a pretty consistent message since the launch of the EOS R in September 2018 that they are not killing off the EOS M product line, with a Canon exec stating last year that they have no plans to kill off the OES M system. Of course, he didn’t rule out the possibility entirely.
The answers given in last year’s interview with Canon Image Communication Business Operations Group Executive, Yoshiyuki Mizoguchi, were very carefully worded. When asked if Canon was planning to keep the EOS M system or go to an APS-C format RF mount camera (the way Nikon has done with the Nikon Z50), he responded…
That’s a product development for the future so I can’t go into detail, and the market will dictate what sort of direction we should take. If the customers do want a small size, lightweight mount I believe there is room for that, so as we said in the previous answer, we will continue to work with the M mount.
So, essentially, as long as people keep buying enough EOS M cameras, they still plan to develop and produce more of them. According to the post at Personal View, though, Canon has other ideas…
Canon plans to destroy whole M lineup and all lenses as soon as 2021, but as camera had been developed for long they plan to sell it first.
With canon expected to announce the EOS M7, the hypothetical successor to the EOS 7D DSLR product line, very soon, it would be very surprising to see Canon suddenly do an about-face and kill off the entire EOS M system with no warning. As a reminder, here are the rumoured specs for the upcoming EOS M7 camera…
- 32-megapixel sensor
- IBIS
- Dual Pixel Autofocus (DPAF II)
- New DIGICProcessor
- 2.36m-dot EVF
- Dual SD Card slots
- 12fps continuous shooting
- Full sensor width 4K up to 60p (1080p up to 120fps)
- 1080p at 120p
- CLog
- Price ~$1,599
The specs largely remain unchanged from a couple of weeks ago, although now it’s said that 1080p goes up to 120fps, we have a possible resolution for the EVF and we have a price estimate. $1,599 doesn’t seem too unreasonable and is actually $100 less than the launch price of the EOS 7D Mark II DSLR.
Bringing out a high-end EOS M camera and then killing off the whole system just doesn’t make sense to me, though. It would likely make a lot of EOS M users want to completely jump ship to another brand rather than simply eat it and upgrade to an EOS R model. After all, they’d have to get all new lenses anyway even if they stuck with Canon on their journey to full-frame, so why not change systems to somebody more consistent and reliable with their promises?
And the EOS M system is still very popular, with the EOS M50 regularly topping camera sales since its release and coming third place overall for the first six months of 2020 in Japan behind the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III and Olympus PEN E-PL9. So, yeah, I’m just not sure I buy the idea that they’re killing them off.
That being said, the top two spots in Japan over the first half of 2020, as I just mentioned, were both from Olympus. And they’re selling out to JIP. So, I guess anything’s possible. Even if unlikely.
[via Personal View]
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